The Map of Time

by Félix J Palma

  We will meet on May 20 in the year 2000, but I will tell you all about that first meeting in my last letter. Everything will begin with that meeting, although, now I think about it, I realize that cannot be true because you will already know me through my letters. Where does our love story begin, then? Here, with this letter? No, this is not the beginning either. We are trapped in a circle, Derek, and no one knows where a circle begins. We can only follow the circle until it closes, as I am doing now, trying to stop my hand from trembling. This is my role, the only thing I have to do, because I already know what you will do: I know you will reply to my letter, I know you will fall in love with me, I know you will look for me when the time comes. Only the details will come as a surprise to me.

  I suppose I should end this letter by telling you what I look like, my way of thinking and seeing the world, as during our meeting in the tearoom when I asked you how you could possibly love me without knowing me, and you assured me you knew me better than I could ever imagine.

  And you knew me of course through my letters, so let us begin: I was born on March 15, 1875, in West London.

  I am slim, of medium height, I have blue eyes and black shoulder-length hair, which, contrary to the norm, I wear loose. Forgive my brevity, but describing myself physically feels like an undignified exercise in vanity. Besides, I would rather tell you more about my inner soul. I have two older sisters, Rebecca and Evelyn. They are both married and live in Chelsea, and it is by comparing myself to them that I can best give you an idea of what I am like. I have always felt different. Unlike them, I have found it impossible to adapt to the time I live in. I do not know how to explain this to you, Derek, but my time bores me. I feel as though I am watching a comedy at the theater and everybody else is laughing. Only I am impervious to the supposed hilarity of the characters” remarks. And this dissatisfaction has turned me into a problem child, someone it is best not to invite to parties, and who must be kept an eye on during family get-togethers, for I have ruined more than one by breaking the norms that dictate the behavior of the society I live in, to the astonishment of the guests.

  Something else that makes me feel very different from the other young women I know is my lack of interest in getting married. I loathe the role women are supposed to fulfill in marriage and for which my mother tries so hard to groom me. I can think of no better way to destroy my free spirit than to become a sensible housewife who spends her days drilling the moral values she has learned into her children and ordering servants around, while her husband goes out into the world of work, that dangerous arena from which women, universally deemed too sensitive and delicate, have been quietly banished. As you can see, I am independent and adventurous, and, although this might strike you as incongruous, I do not fall easily in love. To be honest, I never thought I would be able to fall in love with anyone the way I have fallen in love with you. I had honestly begun to feel like a dusty bottle in a wine cellar waiting to be uncorked at a special occasion that never arrived. And yet, I suppose it is owing to my very nature that all this is happening.

  I will come here to fetch your letter the day after tomorrow, my love, just as you told me I would. I am longing to hear from you, to read your words of love, to know you are mine even though we are separated by an ocean of time.

  Yours evermore, C.

  Despite the effort involved in reading, Tom reread Claire’s letter three times, with the exact look of surprise the girl had predicted, though for quite different reasons, of course. After the third reading, he replaced it carefully in the envelope and leaned back against the tree, trying to understand the contradictory feelings the pages stirred in him. The girl had swallowed every word and had come all that way to leave him a letter! He realized that while for him it was all over, for her it was only just beginning. He saw now how far his adventure had gone. He had played with the girl without stopping to think of the consequences it might have, and now he “knew” what they were. Yes, this letter unintentionally revealed to him the effect his misbehavior had had on his victim, and he would rather not have known. Not only had Claire believed his cock-and-bull story to the point of obediently following the next step in the sequence of events, but their physical encounter had been the breath of life her nascent love had needed in order to catch fire, apparently taking on the proportions of an inferno. And now the blaze was consuming her, and Tom marveled not only that one brief encounter could produce so much love, but that the girl was prepared to devote her life to keeping it alive, like someone stoking a fire in the forest to keep wolves at bay. What amazed him most of all, though, was that Claire was doing all this for him, because she loved him.

  No one had ever expressed such love for him before, he thought uneasily, because it no longer mattered that all the girl’s love was directed towards Captain Shackleton: the man who had bedded her, undressed her tenderly, taken her gently, was Tom Blunt. Shackleton was a mere act, an idea, but what Claire had really fallen in love with was his way of acting him. “And how did that make him feel?” he asked himself. Should being loved so unreservedly and passionately produce the exact same feelings in him, like his reflection appearing the moment he leant over a pond? He was unable to answer that question. And besides, there was not much point in speculating about it, as he would probably be dead by the end of the day.

  He glanced again at the letter he was holding. What was he supposed to do with it? Suddenly, he realized there was only one thing he could do: he must reply to it, not because he intended to take on the role of starstruck lover in this story he had unthinkingly set in motion, but because the girl had insinuated she would be unable to live without his letters. Tom imagined her traveling there in her carriage, walking to the top of the little hill, and finding no reply from Captain Shackleton. He was convinced Claire would be unable to cope with this sudden twist in the plot, this unexpected, mysterious silence. After weeks of going to Harrow and leaving empty-handed, he could imagine her taking her own life in the same passionate way she had decided to love him, perhaps by plunging a sharp dagger through her heart or downing a flask of laudanum. And Tom could not let that happen. Whether he liked it or not, as a result of his little game, Claire Haggerty’s life was in his hands. He had no choice.

  As he walked back to London across country, keeping away from the roads, pausing and tensing at the slightest sound, he realized something had changed: he no longer wanted to die. And not because his life suddenly seemed more worth living than before, but because he had to reply to the girl’s letter. He had to keep himself alive in order to keep Claire alive.

  Once in the city, he stole some writing paper from a stationer’s shop, and, satisfied that Gilliam’s thugs had not followed him nor were posted round his lodgings, he locked himself away in his room in Buckeridge Street. Everything seemed quiet. The usual afternoon noises wafted up to his window from the street, a harmonious melody in which no discordant notes were struck. He pushed the chair up to the bed to make an improvised desk, and spread the paper out on the seat together with the pen and ink he had purloined. He took a deep breath. After half an hour of grappling with the page, deeply frustrated, he realized writing was not as easy as he had imagined. It was far more arduous than reading. He was appalled to discover it was impossible for him to transfer the thoughts in his head onto paper. He knew what he wanted to say, but each time he started a sentence his original idea seemed to drift away and become something entirely different. He still remembered the rudiments of writing that Megan had taught him, but he did not know enough grammar to be able to form proper sentences, and, more importantly, he did not know how to express his ideas with the same clarity as she had. He gazed down at the indecipherable jumble of letters and crossings out that defiled the pristine page. The only legible words were the “Dear Claire” with which he had so optimistically begun his missive. The rest was simply a pitiful demonstration of a semi-illiterate man’s first attempt at writing a letter. He screwed up the sheet of paper, bowing to the inevitable. If Cla
ire received a letter like this she would end up taking her own life anyway, incapable of understanding why the savior of mankind wrote like a chimpanzee.

  He wanted to reply, yet was unable to. But Claire had to find a letter at the foot of the oak tree in two days” time, or she would end up taking her own life! Tom lay back on the bed, trying to gather his thoughts. Clearly he needed help. He needed someone to write the letter for him, but who? He did not know anyone who could write. It could not be just any person, for example, a schoolteacher whom he could force to write it, threatening to break his fingers if he refused. The chosen person not only had to be able to write properly, he had to have enough imagination to play a spirited part in the charade. And on top of that, he needed to be capable of corresponding with the girl in the same passionate tone. Who could he find who possessed all those qualities? It came to him in a flash. He leapt to his feet, thrust aside the chair, and pulled open the bottom drawer of his chest of drawers.

  There it was, like a fish gasping out of water: the novel. He had purchased it when he first started working for Murray, because his boss had told him it was thanks to this book that his business had been such a success. And Tom, who had never owned a book in his life, had gone out and bought it straightaway. Actually reading it, however, had been too exacting a task for Tom, and he had given up after the third page, yet he had held on to it, not wanting to resell the book because in some sense he owed who he was now to that author. He opened the book and studied the photograph of the writer on the inside flap. The caption below said he lived in Woking, Surrey. Yes, if anyone could help him it had to be the fellow in the photograph, this young man with birdlike features named H. G. Wells.

  With no money to hire a carriage and reluctant to risk hiding on a train bound for Surrey, Tom concluded that the only way for him to reach the author’s house was by walking. The three-hour coach ride to Woking would take him three times as long on foot, so that if he left straightaway, he would reach his destination in the early hours of the morning, obviously not the best time to turn up unexpectedly at someone’s house, except in case of an emergency, which this was. He put Claire’s letter in his pocket, pulled on his cap, and left the boardinghouse for Woking without a second thought. He had no choice and was not in the least daunted by the walk. He knew he could count on his sturdy legs and stamina to complete the marathon journey without weakening.

  During his long walk to the author’s house, while he watched night spread itself lazily over the landscape, and glanced over his shoulder every now and then to make sure neither Murray’s thugs nor Solomon were following him, Tom Blunt toyed with different ways of introducing himself to Wells. In the end, the one he decided was the cleverest also sounded the most far-fetched: he would introduce himself as Captain Derek Shackleton. He was sure the savior of mankind would be far better received at any time of the day than plain old Tom Blunt, and there was nothing to stop him successfully playing the role offstage as he had already done with Claire. As Shackleton, he could also tell the author the same tale he had told the girl and show him the letter he had found when he came through the time hole on his first visit to their time. How could this Wells fellow not be taken in if he himself had written a novel about time travel? If he were to make his story believable, though, Tom would need to think up a good reason why neither he nor anyone else from the future was able to write the letter himself.

  Perhaps he could explain that in the year 2000, long before the war began, man had fallen out of the habit of writing, because the task had been given to automaton scribes. In any event, introducing himself as Captain Shackleton still seemed like the best plan: as he would later rescue the planet from the automatons, it felt preferable for the famous hero of the future to ask for help in order to save his beloved than for a nobody to wake up the famous author to beg him to get him out the predicament his desire for sex had got him into.

  When he arrived in Woking in the early hours, the place was immersed in an idyllic calm. It was a cold but beautiful night.

  Tom spent almost an hour reading letter boxes before coming to the one marked Wells. He was standing in front of a darkened three-storey house enclosed by a not too high fence. After studying the author’s house for a few moments, Tom took a deep breath and climbed over the fence. There was no point in waiting any longer.

  He crossed the garden reverentially, as though he were walking into a chapel, climbed the steps to the front door, and was about to ring when his hand stopped short of the bell chime. The echo of a horse’s hooves shattering the nocturnal silence made him freeze. He turned slowly as he heard the animal draw near, and almost immediately saw it stop outside the author’s house.

  A shiver ran down his spine as he watched the rider, barely more than a shadow, dismount and open the gate. Was it one of Murray’s thugs? The fellow made a swift gesture that left him in no doubt, pulling a gun from his pocket and pointing it straight at him. Tom instantly dived to one side, rolling across the lawn and disappearing into the darkness. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the stranger try to follow his sudden movement with the gun. Tom had no intention of making himself an easy target.

  He leapt to his feet and in two strides had reached the fence. He was convinced he would feel the warm sting of the bullet entering his back at any moment, but apparently he was moving too quickly, and it did not happen. He clambered over the fence and pelted down the street until he reached the fields. He ran for at least five minutes. Only then, panting for breath, did he allow himself to stop and look behind him to see whether Gilliam’s thug was following him. All he could see was black night enfolding everything. He had managed to lose him. He was safe, at least for the moment, for he doubted that his killer would bother looking for him in that pitch blackness. He would no doubt go back to London to report to Murray. Feeling calmer, Tom found a place behind some bushes and settled down for the night.

  The next morning, after making sure the thug had really gone, he would return to the author’s house and ask for his help, as planned.

  29

  “You saved a man’s life using your imagination,” Jane had said to him only a few hours earlier, and her words were still echoing in his head as he watched the dawn light flood in through the tiny attic window, revealing the contours of the furniture and their two figures intertwined like a Greek statue on the seat of the time machine. When he had suggested to his wife they might find a use for the seat, this was not exactly what he had had in mind, but he had thought it best not to upset her, and especially not now. Wells gazed at her tenderly. Jane was breathing evenly, asleep in his arms after giving herself to him with renewed enthusiasm, reviving the almost violent fervor of the first months. Wells had watched this passion ebb away with the resigned sorrow of one who knows only too well that passionate love does not last forever; it merely transfers to other bodies. But, there was no law, apparently, against its embers being rekindled by a timely breeze, and this discovery had left a rather foolish grin on the author’s face which he had not seen reflected in any of his mirrors for a long time. And it was all due to the words floating in his head: “You saved a man’s life using your imagination,” words that had made him shine once more in Jane’s eyes, and which I trust you have also remembered, because they link this scene and Wells’s first appearance in our tale, which I informed you would not be his last.

  When his wife went down to make breakfast, the author decided to remain sitting on the machine a while longer. He took a deep breath, contented and extraordinarily at ease with himself.

  There were times in his life when Wells considered himself an exceptionally ridiculous human being, but he seemed now to be going through a phase where he was able see himself in a different, more charitable, and why not say it, a more admiring light.

  He had enjoyed saving a life, as much because of Jane’s unexpected offering, as for the fantastic gift he had been given as a result: this machine that had arisen from his imagination, this ornate sleigh that could tra
vel through time, at least this was what they had made Andrew Harrington believe. Contemplating it now by daylight, Wells had to admit that when he had given it that cursory description in his novel, he never imagined it might turn out to be such a beautiful object if someone actually decided to build it.

  Feeling like a naughty child, he sat up ceremoniously, placed his hand with exaggerated solemnity on the glass lever to the right of the control panel, and smiled wistfully. If only the thing actually did work. If only he could hop from era to era, travel through time at his whim until he reached its farthest frontier—if such a thing existed—go to the place where time began or ended. But the machine could not be used for that. In fact, the machine had no use at all. And now that he had removed the gadget that lit the magnesium, it could not even blind its occupant.

  “Bertie,” Jane called from downstairs.

  Wells leapt up with a start, as though ashamed for her to discover him playing with his toy. He straightened his clothes, rumpled from their earlier passionate embraces, and hurried down stairs.

  “There’s a young man to see you,” Jane said, a little uneasily.

  “He says his name is Captain Derek Shackleton.” Wells paused at the foot of the stairs. Derek Shackleton? Why did the name rang a bell? “He’s waiting in the sitting room. But he said something else, Bertie …” Jane went on, hesitatingly, unsure what tone of voice she should adopt to express what she was about to say: “He says he’s from … the year 2000.” From the year 2000? Now Wells knew where he had heard that name before.

  “Ah, in that case it must be very urgent,” he said, grinning mysteriously. “Let’s hurry and find out what the gentleman wants.” With these words, he strode towards the tiny sitting room, shaking his head in amusement. Next to the chimneypiece, too nervous to sit down, Wells discovered a young man dressed in modest clothing. Before saying anything, he looked the man up and down, amazed. He was quite simply a magnificent specimen of the human race, with his statuesque muscles, noble face, and eyes brimming with ferocity like a cornered panther.